Dr Waney Squier, a renowned consultant neuropathologist for more than 30 years, is alleged to have acted outside of her field of expertise and misquoted research to support her views during civil and criminal court cases.

The hearing is focusing on six cases, including the deaths of four babies and a 19-month-old child, in which Dr Squier, based at John Radcliffe Hospital, in Oxford, provided evidence.

John Radcliffe Hospital Photo: Alamy

In each case, Dr Squier, 67, took the view that the brain damage caused was not due to inflicted injuries, a Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service panel was told.

But the General Medical Council (GMC) has said Dr Squier’s witness statements were irresponsible, deliberately misleading and dishonest.

Dr Squier admits giving evidence in each hearing but denies the allegations of misconduct against her.

Shaken baby syndrome (SBS), also known as non-accidental head injury (NAHI) is the medical name given when a child's brain suffers multiple injuries due to being violently shaken or inflicted to blunt impact.

It is a form of child abuse and for decades, Dr Squier appeared as a prosecution witness against parents and child-minders accused of shaking children to death.

General Medical Council in London Photo: Alamy

But after new research emerged more than ten years ago, she began to dispute mainstream theories and now denies the syndrome exists.

While she once argued the conventional view that a 'triad' of three brain injuries gave enough cause to support the theory of SBS, Dr Squier had a change of heart and began giving evidence in defence of parents.

In proving her new theory, Dr Squier is alleged to have misquoted statements to fit in with her pre-conceived ideas, manipulated medical evidence and gave evidence with a particular goal in mind.

She is now facing disciplinary proceedings brought by the GMC for her work on six cases between 2007 and 2010.

In each case she is accused of failing to act within her field of expertise, failing to be objective and unbiased and being “deliberately misleading”.

When giving evidence in one of the cases, which involved the death of an eight-month-old boy, known only as Baby A, Dr Squier is alleged to have relied on bio-mechanics - a field outside of her expertise - to support her theory that the common SBS injuries could have been caused by a fall from short height.

Opening the case for the GMC, Tom Kark QC said: "In each of the cases being considered Dr Squier provided a report and gave evidence in court to the effect that the injury received was either non consistent with non-accidental injury, or was more likely to have been caused by other means.

"Far from doing so in an objective and helpful way, as an expert is expected to, Dr Squier, the GMC says, conducted herself in a way that was demonstrative of her clinging to a theory so that in fact her evidence was misleading and biased, and the GMC say that when analysed the evidence demonstrates that she must have known that what she was doing was misleading and thus it was dishonest.”